Directory

Encyclopedia

NodeWorks
                              ENCYCLOPEDIA

Link Checker

Home
Encyclopedia : L : LE : LEM :

Lemniscate

 

Lemniscate

In mathematics, a lemniscate is a type of curve described by a Cartesian equation of the form:

Graphing this equation produces a curve similar to . The curve has become a symbol of infinity and is widely used in math. The symbol itself is sometimes referred to as the lemniscate. Its Unicode representation is (∞).

The lemniscate was first described in 1694 by Jakob Bernoulli as a modification of an ellipse (an ellipse is the locus of points which are equidistant from two given points, i.e. the sum of the two distances is constant for all points on an ellipse, but in the case of the lemniscate, the product of these distances is constant). He called it the lemniscus, which is Latin for 'pendant ribbon'.

The lemniscate can be obtained as the inverse transform of a hyperbola, with the inversion circle centered at the center of the hyperbola (bisector of its two foci).

Other equations

A lemniscate may also be described by the polar equation

or the bipolar equation



NodeWorks boosts web surfing!
Page Returned in 0.530 seconds - HTML Compressed 69.2%

This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
 GNU Free Documentation License
© 2008 Chamas Enterprises Inc.